"One passion leads to another. It's passion that makes the wheels of life turn, passion for work, passion for pleasure, passion for passion."

"I understood how strangers met and fell into bed, not how they met and fell in love. I wasn't sure what falling in love meant. The very notion seemed so corny, so arbitrary, so fragile."

"A beautiful woman is like a painting and remains beautiful no matter how old she is."

"Drama copies life in there being a sense of waiting, of a promise never fulfilled."

"Reading - like masturbation - is something you do alone and very little in life brings more pleasure."

"Here's one prophecy the writer can make - you'll never be rich and you'll probably be poor."

"Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write this? Did I have that insight? Sometimes you know something is good, good within your own limits, and those parts make life worth living."

"Happiness is a drug. It creates a biological change in the brain cells that inhibits negative feelings. Happiness boosts energy and increases energy in others."

"It's fun being a girl."

"Innocence isn't something we lose, but realise we don't need."

"If the existentialists are right, that life is meaningless, and if we acknowledge that, we are better equipped to find pleasure in small things."

"All good art is political. Between the lines of every book, the author implants messages for the unsuspecting reader. If not, what point does it serve?"

"When you remove love from sex you enter a mansion with many rooms shaded in nuance and excess, an invitation to peel away all conventions and programming. A chance to explore your hidden self. You shed something and clothe yourself in something else. Sex is the greatest of gifts. Orgasm a glimpse of perfection."

"There is only one secret to great writing and that's great writing."

"When it happens it happens instantly. It's like diving into a pool of warm silky water, like flying through the air on invisible wings, like shedding an old skin and growing a new one. When you fall in love the spirals of your DNA unwind and rewind in the opposite direction. What was black becomes white."

"Writing is draining. Every word is like lifting a stone and levering it into place. Your head aches, your muscles ache and every word you conjure up is heavier than the last one."

"The moment of orgasm is like the first dramatic moment of birth when you draw breath and scream out that you are alive. It is hard to imagine the moment when you fade back into the vacuum and draw your last breath."

"There is a word I have always avoided in my writing, my life, my thoughts. That word is love. What does it mean? How do you deal with it? If you find it and lose it, how do you get over it? Love is something you feel and when you feel it you can't trust it or define it. How can you sustain love for a long time? A short time? You may love your family, your friends. But you don't invite them inside your body."

"Life is a long boring drive on an empty road punctuated by special moments that make the journey worth taking."

"Love is a noun as well as a verb, a treacherous construct."

"Life is a juggling act with your own emotions. The trick is to always keep something in your hand and something in the air."

"Little matters much and much doesn't matter at all."

"The moment he left the warm sheets and the door clicked shut, I had that feeling you get when you are lost in a strange town at night. I curled into the chair where he had watched me undress and tears wet my cheeks. Then I dried my eyes, I looked in the mirror, and I said these two words. Never again."

"Literature is the question without the answer. Philosophy is the answer without the question."

"Happiness is achieving your goals. Contentment is not having any."

"Love is the colour of spring sunshine muted through old windows. Love has a taste, a texture - dark chocolate with pistachios; a sound - wind chimes echoing from a distant hill; a rhythm - the tango, obviously."

"Love enters us like a vague ailment. Your head spins. Your underarms tingle. Love hurts and love has consequences: marriage, babies, separation, longing, human complications."

"Just as you dress for the occasion you should undress when reading erotica."

"A rubber doll with a microchip can imitate human flesh without human feeling. Porn leaves an emptiness inside. Erotica sets up a vibration in the mind that sends pulsing waves through the body."

"Beauty lies between the erotic and the tragic."

"Love is like being on a small boat in the middle of the sea with no compass and no one to rely on except each other."

"You don't feel yourself falling in love, like it's a journey, a process; on the contrary, it hits you like a sudden ague, a fever, the realisation that your life will never be the same again."

"I gaze out of the window at the lanes of red taillights streaming towards the hills, the city laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, the view confirming that I was much more alone than I thought, and all those red lights inspired nothing more than a sense that I, too, should be fleeing somewhere."

"You can cross the Rubicon in a boat without getting wet, but surely, getting wet is the baptism before you begin that new life on the other side."

"I thought that love would last forever. But nothing is forever. Life is not forever. The only reliable permanence is change. Love hurts because change is painful. Love hurts because love lost is an assault on our ego. We fear that we will fail again and those who live in fear of failure slowly but inevitably fail."